Exploring Cognitive Distortions Among University Students

Abstract

The two researchers have recently noticed, through their work in the educational field, that there have been significant changes in the ideas and behaviors of the young people. It is to a degree that is incompatible with the original values and culture of the community, which the Kurdish community has not witnessed before, especially that these behaviors resulted from many of the spread of negative behaviors from low moral values and the spread of Chaos and manifestations of tampering. There is an increase in the rates of delinquency and crime among many young people, which prompted the researchers to study some aspects of this phenomenon and reveal some of the factors associated with it, on the grounds that human behavior is an outcome or a mirror that reflects the individual’s attitudes, ideas, beliefs, values and culture, which the individual acquires it from the environment in which he lives, through his passing through many experiences and situations, and knowledge of the different cultures that he is affected by and contribute mainly to the formation and formation of his beliefs and personality throughout his life.

It is represented in the role of cognitive distortions in the development of negative behaviors of young people. The researcher is pleased to note first that the stage of adolescence is one of the critical age stages that the individual goes through because of the fundamental changes. It includes all the aspects of the personality, whether at the cognitive, social or emotional level. It is characterized by many characteristics that distinguish it from other age stages, which greatly affect the emergence and formation of the personality of the individual over the course of his subsequent life, especially if it coincides with many negative events that undoubtedly affect the behavior of young people and society as a whole. Here, the two researchers stopped at the problem of his research with the following question: (What is the level of cognitive distortions among university students).

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The researcher aims to illustrate the following:

• First: To build a scale of cognitive distortions among the university students.
• Second: To identify the level of cognitive distortions among the university students.
• Third: To know the significance of the statistical differences in cognitive distortions according to gender, specialization and stage of study
• The current research identified the following:-
• The current research is determined by the students of Salah al-Din University in Erbil governorate in its various faculties and who are continuing in morning studies according to the variables (gender, specialization, academic stage) for the academic year (2020-2021).

The current research relied on the following procedures to obtain the scale:

1. A scale of cognitive distortions was developed and built according to the Beak model, consisting of (7) dimensions: (dual thinking, overgeneralization, personalism, compulsions and imperatives, false interpretation, and unfair comparison).
2. Presenting the items (cognitive distortions) to a group of experts in education and psychology to extract the apparent validity of the cognitive distortions scale as well as extracting the construction echo for them.
3. The research sample included (500) male and female students who were chosen randomly.
4. Analysis of the scale items using the upper and lower group method.
5. Extracting the stability of the scale by the re-test method, as it reached on the scale (0.83) and in the half-segmentation method for the cognitive distortions scale it reached (0.93) and by the Cronbach’s Alpha method for the scale reached (0.94)

After applying the cognitive distortions scale to the sample members and analyzing their data statistically by using (SPSS), the following results were reached:

1. The sample members had a level of defined distortions.
2. There are no statistically significant differences in cognitive distortions among the university students according to the two variables (gender and specialization), and there are statistically significant differences according to the academic stage variable.

In light of the research results, a number of conclusions were reached and a number of recommendations and suggestions were presented.